This is one PR hit that’ll be hard to come back from.
After OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced a new deal with the Department of Defense last week, droves of once-loyal users vowed that they’d ditch ChatGPT.
And now, new data reported by TechCrunch shows that those outraged users weren’t making empty threats. On Saturday, uninstalls of the ChatGPT mobile app skyrocked by 295 percent from the day before, according to market intelligence provider Sensor Tower. As TC noted, that’s a significant leap compared to the AI chatbot’s typical day-over-day uninstall rate of nine percent over the past 30 days.
Many of them appear to be jumping ship to Anthropic’s Claude. Anthropic, unlike OpenAI, had refused to cut a deal with a deeply unpopular administration to give the military unrestricted access to its AI tech. In particular, Anthropic demanded that its AI wouldn’t be used in autonomous weapons systems or in the mass surveillance of US citizens.
Even if this was merely posturing by Anthropic — reports suggest that the US military used Claude to help select targets for the deadly missile strikes in Iran that killed the nation’s leader Ali Khamenei and hundreds of civilians — it clearly mattered to consumers. On Friday, the day after Anthropic vowed it wouldn’t make a deal with the Pentagon, installs of Claude surged by 37 percent day-over-day, and a further 51 percent on Saturday.
On top of driving away existing users, OpenAI’s Pentagon deal also appeared to have scared away potential new ones. Its download growth dropped 14 percent day-over-day on Saturday, and was down another five percent the next day. A day before the controversy, ChatGPT’s growth had been up 13 percent.
The outrage over OpenAI’s decision is inescapable in AI circles. One of the most upvoted posts of all time in the r/ChatGPT subreddit, made just a few days ago, calls on users to show proof of cancelling their ChatGPT subscriptions. “You are training a war machine,” it declared. Explainers are being posted left and right with tips on how to transfer your ChatGPT conversation history to Claude. Altman tried to control the damage with an AMA on X, only to be barraged by more outraged users — and, worse yet, incisive questions that he didn’t have a convincing answer for.
Claude surged to the top of the US App Store over the weekend, dethroning ChatGPT, which is now in second place. Data cited by TechCrunch shows that for the first time in the app’s history, US downloads for Claude surpassed downloads of ChatGPT. It remains to be seen how the backlash will affect OpenAI in the long run, or for that matter the broader AI race — but public opinion, for now, has clearly swung against the company.
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